Slowly, he pierced its surface with a 90-inch snow tube, worked it down into the ground below and pulled out a plug of the snow to measure its depth and water density.

Sievers, a soil conservation technician, and Sylvia Hickenlooper, a soil conservationist, hike 10,000 feet up the Longs Peak Trail in Larimer County in January, February, March and April every year to gather data for the U.S. Agricultural Service's snow survey. The information is compiled with data taken from dozens of other manual sites and automated sites statewide and used to developed the water supply outlook for the state in the run-up to warmer weather and higher water demands.

Hickenlooper and Sievers took 10 samples from designated sites along the measurement location, marked with yellow diamond-shaped signs with a red arrow on them, which has been used as a site for decades. They measured the depth and weight of the snow in the samples, and Hickenlooper then crunched the numbers.

"I was hoping it would be a little bit better," she said, leaning over her calculator and pad, while kneeling in the snow.

The 30-year average for the site is 10.8 inches of water in the snowpack. Her calculations showed for March, the average is 5.4, even after some encouraging snowfall during Colorado's snowiest month.

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Sievers and Hickenlooper are also responsible for manual measurements at three other sites, all of which feed into the water sheds that flow into the South Platte Basin, which supplies Boulder County communities. So far this year, the South Platte is ranked second statewide among the eight major basins for storage, holding 82 percent of average this season. The Yampa and White River basins are at 106 percent of average, according to the USDA's Colorado Water Supply Outlook Report released March 1.

Hickenlooper said that most of the state's snowpack has been at about 70 percent of average, while the Longs Peak site was only at 50 percent from February measurements. Still, that was up from 25 percent in January.

Snow typically peaks for Colorado in March, but there is some hope that April could bring additional moisture to the snowpack.

Storms, Hickenlooper said, "would be wonderful at this point."

The USDA March 1 report was not optimistic about the state's prospects of having a solid water supply. The report takes into account snowpack, precipitation, reservoir storage and streamflow. The report noted that "all basins will need a significant turnaround in weather patterns in March in order to see improvements in this year's water supply outlook."

Some storms have rolled through the state since the last measurements, but if the measurements at Longs Peak are an indicator, they did not meet the bar to turn around the March 1 outlook.

"The state can expect below-average runoff this spring and summer across all of the major basins," the report predicted. "Reservoir storage percentages across the state continue to decline."

The data Hickenlooper and Sievers gather at their four snowpack measurement sites will be forwarded on for inclusion in the April report.

Those reports are watched closely by municipalities and irrigation companies, which likely will have to make plans for a dry season.

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